First off I know that some of this has been covered before in various posts but I think that what I am posting was not covered exactly, but rather I am stating what I think is an answer to several posts (I read a ton of them before writing this post).
The Problem: The System is too limiting and unrealistic. Take for example the Book of Blades. 1 stock -- knife handle, 2 - stocks Sword handle, 4 stocks Dagger Blade, 6 stocks -- Shortsword etc. As the number of blades to be made increases so does the number of stocks to be used. This can easily create a balancing problem as well as just being unrealistic. Take the Sabre. this is a thinner lighter weapon than the shortsword (looks to be based on the roman gladius). But based on what I have done so far, you will have to use more than 6 stocks for a sabre if its even in the list of blades to be made.
Why: The system needs to be not only more realistic but it also needs to be more flexible.
Solution: The answer to the problem would require a bit of a reworking of the code, as well as the creation of new data in the databases. And a new items as well.
1) New items. A new container that would hold the books or blueprints of weapons, armor, shields and anyother crafting item you could think of. This would be needed because of the increase in the number books that the player would have. It would operate similiar to the Glyph Sack. Eventually a second container similiar to the bookshelf in the jayose library would be needed once player house's of some sort are created. A new set of books to be aquired. Each book would be for a class or type of weapon. Shortsword, Dagger, Longsword etc. This gives the dev's a way to create a more balanced system since now there are more options available and you can now have items that are different in class and design but close enough to each other in weight that the same number of stocks would be more reasonable.
2) The books would have skill requirements so that more complex or powerful weapons would only become available if the character has the required skill level. This would show up in the new system of menu's.Just like you can only repair items of a certain complexity based on your level of repair skill, only those weapons you have the skill to make would become available.
3) A new system of crafting items. Not a radical change, just the addition of a new window with a menu for the selection of what your creating. This way you can have one set of blueprints or book give you multiple blades of differing complextity within the same class. A good example of this would be if you wanted to allow players to make say Simple Daggers, Dark Daggers, SilverWeave Daggers etc. Those items on the new menu would be the items that you could make given the number of stocks etc that you are working on and the level of skill you have. If you have worked a stock once to make say Dagger Alpha Blade, then a second working wouldn't require the menu since all your doing is refining the blade you started with unless you want them to start with the simple blade and then if they have skill have the menu would give them the more complex blade.
It is the third point that is most required. Even if only the third point is implemented and you didn't replace the Book of Blades with multiple books for different classes of swords, the addition of a menu based on number of stocks, or other items being worked on would still give you more flexibility in the system. But I think having multiple books would be best, as this opens up more quests that you can make.
4) A side note -- Player Created Books. What I am talking about here is not where you have code that takes a set of weapon stats and creates a book based on the characters skill although this is possible as well, but rather the character/player would create a weapon design, this would consist of the parts required, the stats of the weapon, potion etc. This is then submitted to the devs/Gm/etc. If it is accepted then the character would be given the book. Like all books the entries would only be available if the character has the needed skill level to build the item in question
So to wrap this up.
1) A new system of menu's to add flexibilty to the crafting process without making a radical change to the system. 2) New items to be used in the system. 3) Player created items possible, with two ways of handling this. A) A set of menus where you select the effects of the item to be made and a set of tables draws up the plans. Or B) you submit your plans to the GM/Dev etc and they create the item when they add the appropriate data to the crafting tables. Option A, has the advantage that you select the available options for plan creations and the players decide what they want in a particular item. It is flexible but would require a more comprehensive dataset to be created, Option B needs less data upfront but does require continual human intervention to work.
